Since warehouse space for storage of goods is expensive, there are many advantages to an efficient and well organized vertical storage rack system which will allow the storage of goods in an orderly fashion. Since the products are stacked vertically, optimum use of the floor space may be achieved. The disadvantage is that the goods to be stored must now be raised to the height of the rack where they are to be stored. The moving and especially the raising of the goods is most efficiently accomplished via fork trucks.
In as much as fork trucks require aisles to travel to the desired location to either store or retrieve goods from a particular rack, this aisle space is not available for storage. To maximize the storage area given a limited number of square feet in a building or warehouse, one must minimize the area reserved for aisle space for the fork trucks.
Unfortunately, as one reduces the size of these aisles, the room to maneuver for the fork trucks is also reduced, and the end result is that the fork trucks sometimes hit the storage racks, damaging the fork trucks as well as the storage racks.
Prior art (Konstant U.S. Pat. No. 3,785,502; Klein U.S. Pat. No. 4,117,938) has taught the use of recessed legs towards the bottom of the rack in order to give more room to maneuver to the fork trucks at the ground level. This has typically been accomplished by angling back the front legs (the legs closest to the aisles), which puts these legs out of harm's way. However, the weight of the storage rack and of the goods stacked thereupon is then concentrated on this angled leg, and substantial use of struts and reinforcing members is required. This makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to retrofit existing storage racks in the field. The retrofit, if possible, is difficult, expensive, and time consuming, and requires specialized skills, such as a good welder to complete the task. Furthermore, while the bottom of the angled legs is far removed from the aisles, the closer one gets to the top portion of the angled legs, the closer one is to the aisle and to the distinct possibility of having a fork truck run into the angled leg. Also, since the prior art designs use the same upright members for the entire storage rack, the only way to beef up one portion of the upright is to beef up the entire height of the rack.